The Story of the “Queer Saints and Martyrs”: Taking Shape

Ever since I began writing for the Queer Church, one of the key themes I have been exploring has been that of the place of LGBT men and women in Christian history – recognized and unrecognised saints, martyrs for the church, some who have been martyred by the church directly or indirectly, and those who have achieved remarkable high office in the church, as popes, bishops or abbots in spite of clear homoerotic interests and activities.

As I have explored individuals and notable groups, I have been seeing the outline of a narrative thread underlying them, which I have been using to draw them together into what I hope will become a book for publication. The outline for the book I have previously published, as a synopsis, and as a reflection of the feast of All (Gay) Saints. I have now expanded this synopsis one level, which I will be posting in instalments over the coming week, under six main divisions. For a preview of these posts and the work in progress, follow the links to my “Queer Saints and Martyrs” pages here at Queering the Church, and from them to the detailed posts on individuals and groups at my satellite site, “Queer Saints and Martyrs – and others”.

From both the Western and Eastern Roman Empire, a wide range of men (and fewer women). These include pairs of lovers, martyrs for the church, bishops who wrote homoerotic verse, and cross-dressing women.

Boswell has been criticized by more recent academics for his assertion that the Middle Ages represented a great flowering of a gay sub-culture. However, even if he overstated his case and the term “gay” for this period is subject to misinterpretation, there is no doubt that there were numerous recognized saints and other senior clergy who freely used homoerotic imagery in their spiritual writing, and others who are notable for achieving high office as popes or bishops, in spite of well-known erotic relationships with men.

The prevalence of such relationships among the clergy prompted the most important of the calls for strong penalties against “sodomy”, by Alain de Lille and St Peter Damian in particular. For a long time though, these calls were rejected by the leaders of the Church.

The figure of Saint Joan is of central importance to queer Christians, as a cross-dressing queer saint who was first martyred by the church, and later canonized. As the Middle Ages passed into the Early Renaissance, many thousands more alleged sodomites were tried and condemned to death by the church, either directly by the Inquisition or by secular authorities at its instigation.

Ecclesiastical involvement in these trials later gave way to purely secular proceedings, but the initial pseudo-religious motivation for declaring same-sex love a capital offence remained an important factor in the retention of the death penalty in many European countries right up to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and for the export of state-sanctioned persecution by the colonial powers to societies which had previously tolerated or even celebrated sexual minorities.

As secular authorities relaxed or withdrew criminal sanctions though, religious authorities applied a form of figurative martyrdom to gay or lesbian identified people in the church, attempting to censor the writing of theologians who dissented from the orthodox prohibitions, or excluding from ministry those who were seen to be gay or lesbian.

In the early church, it was said that the growth of the faith was fed by the blood of the martyrs. Much the same thing appeared to be happening at the close of the twentieth century and start of the twenty first. “Martyr” means one who gives witness, and the witness of the LGBT identified men and women who refused to be silenced by the Church authorities has inspired many more. Over the last few decades there has been a great flowering of writing on faith and spirituality from a queer perspective, and of explicitly queer ministry.

3 thoughts on “The Story of the “Queer Saints and Martyrs”: Taking Shape”

I’m looking forward to your book on saints! I especially appreciate the way you break down history into 6 phases because I was just looking at a 7-part breakdown of LGBT spiritual history that Joe Perez did for Bridge of Light, a New Year’s ritual based LGBT culture and the colors of the rainbow flag. A summary of his historical categories is at the end of my Bridge of Light post:http://jesusinlove.blogspot.com/2010/12/celebrate-new-year-with-bridge-of-light.htmlBut your system seems to fit better with a specifically Christian model. I especially like the way you emphasize "martyred by the church" as a period in history.I’m currently reading “Spitting at Dragons: Toward a Feminist Theology of Sainthood” by Elizabeth Stuart. I recommend that you read it as background for your book because she has many insights that can be applied to LGBT issues. It’s out of print, but I was able to buy a used copy. Stuart is known for her work on lesbian and gay theology.Happy new year!

Thanks Kitt. I will definitely hunt down a copy of "Spitting at Dragons" – Elisabeth Stuart is one of my favourite writers on queer faith.I also definitely need to uncover more female stories.I'm pleased that you like my breakdown. It's not intended to be serious history – I'm certain any academic would find a lot to fault – but a convenient structure for a narrative. One of the sub-themes I will need to develop is the many paradoxes and counter-examples in each period.